Top Units by Faction: Minas Tirith Troops

Hello again everybody, General Ly Average here, back again to give you the second article in my ‘Top Units by Faction’ category: my top three troops of Minas Tirith; Rangers of Gondor, Citadel Guard and Guards of the Fountain Court. I hope you all enjoy!

Top Three Troops of Minas Tirith

Rangers of Gondor on my painting desk! Image credit goes to me, for once! Note I didn’t zoom in that far, else my distinctly mediocre painting would have been exposed

Number Three: Rangers of Gondor

Just (and I mean ‘just’) sliding in to my top three Minas Tirith troops list are the Rangers of Gondor. You’ve seen them massacred by Orcs in the films, now see them cower behind other warriors to provide Fight 4 spear support and shoot anything that comes near them. Anyway, I digress. First off we need to talk about their stats, and foremost amongst these should be their Fight and Shoot Value: 4 and 3+ respectively. This puts them at a good, competitive Fight Value and enables them to shoot pretty well too, which is a good job as bows are a standard part of their wargear. They are Strength 3, as with the other warriors in the list, but they have a lower defence than most as they only wear Armour, leaving them at one less defence than a Citadel Guard (which *SPOILERS* I will discuss later). This can be an issue, but it’s not a massive downside as most of your army will have pretty good defence (indeed, most of the units you should have on the front line will have much higher defence than this). They have the standard 1 Attack, 1 Wound and Courage 3 that you would expect of your average warrior from the race of men and a points value of 8 as standard. As for equipment, they come with bows as standard in an army with no way to override the bow limit (so only a third of your army can be Rangers at maximum) and Armour,  leaving them a rather fragile unit in a generally quite high Defence army. They are vulnerable to normal bows and will drop at a frightening rate to crossbows, but their good shoot value ought to help you win shooting battles with your enemy or at least kill a few models here and there. All the Ranger models come with swords as standard, so you can Feint if you have a support (such as another Ranger), but your rangers shouldn’t be risking their necks in combat  because they can take spears for a point, meaning they can camp behind a high-defence front line and pop off shots so that they aren’t killed off in combat due to their low defense. This is probably their central function for me, at least; they’re one of two Minas Tirith infantry units sold in plastic box sets of 12 and they are the only ‘standard’, non-elite troop in your army with Fight 4, so you have a way of standing up to most armies in a straight-up fight, with the Rangers transferring their good Fight value to a rank of Defence 6 Minas Tirith warriors with shields in front of them, enabling the Fight 3 warriors to actually win their fights. However, they only make it to Number Three in my list because there are other, better ways of completing this role, such as the next troop I’m going to talk about. When writing this, my big decision was whether Rangers or Knights of Minas Tirith were more worthy of making the Top Three, but the Rangers won out because of their higher, competitive Fight 4 and general ease of use, whereas the Knights are Fight 3 cavalry, which isn’t great, but do have lances to help a lot with the Minas Tirith list’s general problem at getting kills. But with Rangers you don’t have the problems of cavalry everywhere, i.e relying on getting the charge and just being an overpriced infantryman is you don’t and have a simple to use, reliable but not amazing unit,: equip with spears, sit behind the line and shoot, support when combat hits. I always have a few rangers in my force, but only really because I don’t have enough of the next two units.

P.S I didn’t really know where I could fit this in in the above article, but Rangers of Gondor can be upgraded to Rangers of Ithilien for a point, which means that they gain the ‘Woodland Creature’ special rule, which is familiar to anyone that has ever dabbled in Elven armies before. It’s OK for creating themed lists, I suppose, such as a Defenders of Osgiliath army or something like that, but it’s by no means essential. Treat it as a strictly situational rule that could be a method of spending those last few points that we all have left when writing a list (which is nice for those of us that like round numbers, I suppose). Also, Rangers of Arnor use the same models as Rangers of Gondor, so if you’re thinking of starting a Grey Company/Arnor force these models will be useful for that as well.

Number Two: Citadel Guard

A Citadel Guard with Longbow. Image credit goes to J.P.Triffitt

In second position on  my leaderboard we find the Citadel Guard. These guys have a standard man profile with heavy armour and, importantly, Fight Value 4, putting them at a pretty competitive Fight Value. They have the options to take a Spear for a point per model; a strong option, as it lets you pass on the strong Fight Value to a line of higher defence guys in front of them to keep the Guards safe, as they are D5 with no option to take a Shield, leaving them vulnerable to Strength 3 (i.e the majority) of attacks. Secondly, they have the option to take Longbows for 2 points. These count as Elven Bows, meaning that you have a source of Strength 3 shooting in an army of men, which is rare; although they still only hit on a 4+, the higher shooting attack strength is still a huge asset. Their final option is a Horse for 6 points (as with Beregond, a conversion would be required). This is a very interesting option indeed, as it gives Minas Tirith a F4 cavalry option which it would otherwise lack. Although they can’t take lances, the knockdown bonus really helps Minas Tirith troops kill things, which is always and issue with the army as all of your troops have Strength 3 and only one unit, the Knights, have access to lances for a bonus to help mitigate it. Citadel Guards also have the special rule ‘Bodyguard (Gondor), meaning they will auto-pass all Courage checks they have to take while the hero that they are guarding is alive and on the field, which goes a long way to negating their mediocre Courage of 3. This is incredibly useful as you then have some models that are always going to stick around when your force is broken without needing a Stand Fast! from a nearby hero; you can therefore give them Longbows and leave them to hold back-field objectives without having to leave a hero to babysit them. Secondly, it gives you a guaranteed method of pinning a Terrifying model in place, especially if it has Harbinger of Evil/Ancient Evil. Rather like Faramir, the reason I really rate Citadel Guard is that they’re very versatile: you could give them spears for a F4 spear-supporting model that isn’t going to run away and will only die on 6’s to normal bows (even better, give as many as you can Longbows as well so you get a ranged threat out of them as well), you could give them Horses and Longbows to have a fast-moving, ranged threat that can charge into combat and knock down enemy models, leaving you in a much better position to kill them off, or you could just have a group with Longbows left to guard a back-field objective. Their equipment options just give them a huge amount of versatility that the Rangers of Gondor don’t quite have, in my opinion; they can have similar roles, but Citadel Guard do the ranged threat and spear support combo thing just as well for only a few more points while having an equally good statline (in my eyes, at least), a great special rule and the options to fulfil other, different roles as well. For all these reasons (and I really like the models, love the Minas Tirith armour aesthetic) I highly rate Citadel Guard. It takes a very good unit indeed to keep them off the top spot……..

Number One: Guards of the Fountain Court

Some beautifully painted Guards of the Fountain Court with Shields, one with Banner, being led by Beregond. Prepare to see something like this a lot if you play against Minas Tirith regularly. Thank you to ste271276 of the One Ring Forum for providing this image, all credit goes to him.

There could only be one winner, I’m afraid. I thought for a long time about just typing the subtitle, adding a picture and leaving it at that, because everyone save the newest players have seen these guys before. It’s pretty hard to miss a model that makes up the majority of even semi-competitive Minas Tirith lists in the known universe, and probably outside it too. ‘Too few in number to form their own regiments upon the battlefield’? Yeah right, Games Workshop. However, Minas Tirith players are right to spam these guys because they are seriously, seriously good; I’d even take the step of calling them one of the best troops in the game. First off, they have F4: very nice. Their shoot value is irrelevant as they can’t take bows, but you wouldn’t take them anyway as you REALLY want these guys with shields. Strength 3 is the only real downside in this unit, but if you play Minas Tirith this isn’t exactly an alien concept to you, unfortunately. But don’t worry, because even if they’re not killing their opponents their opponents won’t be killing them any time soon as they have a standard Defence value of 6. Yeah, you read that right, 6 (Very Heavy Armour is a wonderful thing). But the deal-breaker is that you can then give them shields for one paltry point to bring them up to Defence 7, meaning that Strength 4 attacks, and therefore the majority of heroes, need 6’s to wound them. 11 points may seem a little pricey for standard infantry in an army of men, but it’s well worth it for this unit. You’ll be able to hear your opponent’s teeth grind together if you manage to pin their prized hero in place with Fountain Court Guard as they realise that their powerhouse combat hero now needs a string of 6’s to even break through your normal line infantry, which can also shield. They are seriously, seriously tough to break through; Heroic Combats through them become very hard to achieve for all but the physically strongest heroes and hits from normal infantry will rarely find their mark.

After all that, you might have been foolish enough to think that the good points ended there, but you were mistaken. One attack and one wound is perfectly normal (Fountain Court Guards with 2 wounds just don’t bear thinking about…) but Courage 3, for a unit that is supposedly the very pinnacle of Gondor’s soldiery, is a bit underwhelming. But luckily for Minas Tirith players this doesn’t matter, because Guards of the Fountain Court have the same Bodyguard rule that Citadel Guard benefit from, so they can charge all Terrifying models without breaking a sweat and automatically pass their Courage checks for your force being broken. So, your opponent will, in most scenarios, have to painstakingly kill 75% of your majority-D7 troops in order to secure the victory, as none of them will run away even with half of their comrades gone; as long as the hero they are protecting is alive, casualty figures are just numbers to them. The final icing on the cake is that they come with spears as standard and can take a banner for 25 points, so you can have a banner that will never run away (highly useful in ‘To the Death!’, where banners alive at the end of the game grant VP’s) and a unit that don’t even need Citadel Guard or Rangers equipped with Spears to support them. Competitive Minas Tirith lists regularly feature several full warbands of these guys, with at least one led by Beregond, and however many more warbands the writer wants led by heroes of his/her choosing. They are by far and away the best troop choice in the Minas Tirith army list and probably one of the best in the whole game as well. The combination of the F4, D7 with shield (which you WILL give them, you’d be a fool not to), spears and Bodyguard gives you a self-supporting, good Fight value block of troops that will almost never run away. Personally, I think the models are lovely too, which stops me hating the sight of 24 or so heading across the table towards me in a 500 points game. Awesome models with an awesome statline to match, there isn’t much more to say here other than ‘take them’ (other than the financial cost of the Finecast sets).

So that’s all everyone, thank you for reading! What are your thoughts on my rankings? Any units you think I’ve looked on unfairly? Any troops you swear by? Let me know in the comments section below! Special thanks goes to J.P.Triffitt and ste271276 of the One Ring Forum for providing some splendid pictures of their Citadel Guard and Fountain Court Guards respectively. Make sure to check out the expert commission painters and modellers Shadow and Flame on their website (link below), it’s well worth a look.

Shadow and Flame Website: http://www.shadowandflame.co.uk/

So, thanks again for reading everybody. I’ll probably be starting another category of articles for my next post or possibly writing more for the ‘Beginner’s Advice’ section. I will be returning to this category at some point to write an article on the best heroes in the Mordor army list; I think alternating between Good and Evil armies will be a good idea for the sake of variety. Any particular topics you want to see or armies you want in the spotlight, let me know in the comments section. And most importantly, Happy Strategy Battle Gaming everyone!